Comment by ilyt

There is little proof that the "enterprise" expensive ones are that much more durable, let alone for the price. Enterprise ones usually have some better power off protection and some more spare flash for write endurance but that's about it. Hell, we just had 2 of the enterprise intel ones outright die in last month (out of lot of ~30), at 98% life left!

On spinning rust there is practically no difference on reliability (assuming you buy drives designed for 24/7 not some green shit), just that you can attach SAS to it. We got stacks of dead drives to prove it.

> What is the rationale behind buying used drives, or drives from off-brand vendors of unknown or even ill reputation? Aside from just goofing around, I mean. I never can justify the idea, no matter how strapped for cash I could be.

That the flash is the same but strapped to different controller.

And if you truly care about your data you want redundancy, not more expensive storage. Put saved money into getting your home server with ECC memory(in home) or having one extra node or hot spare (in work).